Recently Mentioned Books

For more on related points, read Charles’s new and excellent book The Upside of Down , not to be confused with Megan McArdle’s new and excellent The New Up Side of Down , a single space can make all the difference in the world.

6. Short Term 12 , set in a foster home, is in fact a good movie.

3. Handbook of the Digital Creative Economy , edited by Ruth Towse and Christian Handke.

2. Why Government Fails So Often and How it Can Do Better , by Peter H. Schuck, the author is largely a Democrat by the way.

1. Big Ideas in Macroeconomics: A Nontechnical View , by Kartik B. Athreya.

Many of you have been asking me about the forthcoming Thomas Piketty book .  I am writing a 2500-word review of it for…elsewhere…so mum’s the word until then.  For now I’ll just say it is a book to buy, read, and indeed study.  Here is one good piece on the book from The Economist .  It’s already a splendid year for the published word.

1. MIE: weird Japanese toothpastes .  And here is a Swiss nihilist toothpaste .

By the way, I have been watching Boys Over Flowers lately, a Korean drama (it’s also on Hulu).  Think of it as a mix of Heathers, Mean Girls, and Clueless, but set in a posh Korean high school, with lots of “Average is Over” value.  There is definitely income-elasticity of demand in Korean drama, even if there is not much price-elasticity.  There is also plenty on matching models, moral hazard, status competition, and repeated games, and not always with cooperative solutions.

Given the suddenly prominent role of Freestyle chess in economics, Big Data, and the social sciences (see also The Second Machine Age ), I hope this event receives some of the media attention which it deserves.

I am likely to use A Separation and Memories of Murder as two of the movies, along with a new release depending on schedule.

I am likely to use A Separation and Memories of Murder as two of the movies, along with a new release depending on schedule.

That is the forthcoming book by Megan McArdle and the subtitle is Why Failing Well is the Key to Success .  I think this book will be a big deal.  It is extremely well written, engages the reader, is based upon entirely fresh anecdotes and research results , and develops an important point.  I look forward to seeing it make its mark.

That is the new forthcoming Levitt and Dubner book, due out May 13 .

3. Glenn Reynolds, The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself .

2. Alberto Simpser, Why Governments and Parties Manipulate Elections .

1. Lars Peter Hansen and Thomas Sargent, Recursive Models of Dynamic Linear Economies .

The interview is in general interesting on the history of American food.  I have just ordered her new book Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal .

That is a new volume edited by Sandra J. Peart and David M. Levy.

This part reminds me of some ideas in my own Risk and Business Cycles :

The expected creative powers of female musical artists are continuing to increase, especially when it comes to composition.  Taylor Swift therefore will produce another album of good songs, though the burden of extreme fame , and the accompanying difficulty of replenishing her creative wells, will hold her back from five more such albums.  Bergoglio will pass and be forgotten, as he has not built the necessary coalition within the Vatican and also I do not predict the triumph of liberal religion...

That is from the excellent Breakfast with Lucian: The Astounding Life and Outrageous Times of Britain’s Great Modern Painter , by Geordie Greig.

The authors are Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, and the subtitle is Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies .

That is from Mark Gerchick’s Full Upright and Locked Position: Not-so-Comfortable Truths about Air Travel Today , a pretty good book although much of the material may be already known to some of the potential readers.

5. Michael Avery and Danielle McLaughlin, The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back from Liberals .  Self-explanatory.

4. Samuel Scheffler, Death & the Afterlife , with commentaries from other famous philosophers at the back.  The bottom line: through the careful use of thought experiments, we can infer that we care about the impersonal future more than we might think.  Scheffler is still getting better and deeper as a philosopher.  This Thomas Nagel review of the book is gated, but even the first few (ungated) paragraphs are worth reading.